


10 Things Steve Hates About Darcy

by emma98



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Post Captain America Civil War, Road Trip, Sharing a Bed, hint: Steve confused the word hate with another four letter word, not actually related to the movie 10 things I hate about you, steve is confused about what the word HATE means, this was supposed to be a drabble. woopsie, vague mentions of canon typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 11:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8487934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emma98/pseuds/emma98
Summary: #1.  She's too nice and makes friends too easily.#2.  She's pretty in an annoying kind of way.#3.  She's a good person with kindness in her heart#4.  She sings along to everything, whether she knows the words or not.#5.  She smells too good---
Steve probably should have figured out a long time ago that the list of things he hated about Darcy wasn't quite hate.  
A road trip with the lady in question might help him figure a few things out.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a drabble. I got a little worried when I couldn't end it after 2000 words. Then it kept doubling, day by day. And now, here we are, well over 10k. 
> 
> Sorry?
> 
> I'm actually kind of proud of this. I hope that you enjoy it.
> 
> Warning: WILDLY INACCURATE CANADIAN PORTRAYALS HERE. (You'll know what I mean when you get to the two instances where I bend logic to fit into the story). (It's saying something that in a story about superheroes, the thing I am most worried about backlash on is offending my awesome Canadian neighbors with inaccuracies. SORRY IN ADVANCE!).

**10 Things Steve Hates About Darcy**

 

* * *

 

Steve Rogers did not like Darcy Lewis very much.

 

He had only known her for a few months, ever since Thor had dropped her off at the secret Avengers base in the wilds of Canada before he had hopped off on his rainbow bridge into space to stop the Universe from ending.  From the moment he had laid eyes on her, he’d been annoyed.  He didn’t really  _ hate _ her.  He just didn’t appreciate her company.  

 

At all.

 

It was a problem, for sure, because everyone else loved her.  

 

Everyone.

 

It was the first thing Steve really kind of disliked (not hated, really), about Darcy.  She could get along with just about anyone she met, and not only get along with them, she could wrap them around her little finger in the span of a few hours, at most.

 

Clint and Laura Barton had known her for years, ever since Thor had taken off on his rainbow pony back to the homeland of Asgard.  Natasha had known her almost as long, and called Darcy  _ lapochka _ , which Steve had been chagrined to know meant  _ sweetie pie _ .  

 

In less than twenty-four hours, Darcy had enchanted every single member of Steve’s team.  Wanda had been easy enough, and Steve had to admit he was grateful that Darcy managed to pull it off.  Wanda had been changed since he had broke his team off of the raft.  She was walking around, constantly terrified and jumpy or worse, there were times when she would just sit still, staring off into space, barely breathing, as if that awful motion sensor collar were still wrapped around her neck.  

 

Sam had done what he could, but he was the first to admit that he was hardly qualified to help her.  Laura had unleashed all the mothering on her that Wanda could handle, lumping the young woman in with her own kids and taking care of her just as fiercely.  Scott had resorted to literal juggling in order to wrangle anything resembling a smile from her.  

 

But then Thor brought Darcy, and in less than a week, she and Wanda were inseparable.  Steve had seen Wanda smile for the first time in weeks after being dragged into playing a prank on Sam involving food coloring, mustard and an empty toothpaste tube.    And rather than get annoyed, as was Sam’s default setting when dealing with, say,  _ Bucky _ , he had laughed, congratulated Darcy on her success, and promised that she would never see his retaliation coming.

 

She did.  And she had secured Laura Barton in the war when Sam had accidentally put jelly covered rubber snakes under the covers of the Barton bed instead of Darcy’s bed.  

 

Scott and Darcy had bonded over music from the 1980’s and  _ The Mighty Ducks  _ trilogy.  The children adored her because she managed to take a meager amount of rations and transform them into more than welcome sweet treats.  At this point, Steve was convinced that the cool autumn breeze and the changing leaves loved Darcy Lewis as well.  

 

And what probably stung, was that Steve knew if Bucky were not in a cryo-freeze unit, he’d be falling in line to worship at the Darcy Lewis alter.  Reason one being that if Natasha trusted her and loved her, Bucky would certainly follow.  Steve didn’t understand it, and had been surprised when moments before going into cryofreeze, Natasha had shown up out of nowhere to talk softly with Bucky.  Apparently they had had some kind of grand romance, it had been erased from both of their minds after it had happened, but was now known to both of them once more.

 

Steve might have been wary about it, but the glimpse of affection he had seen between the two of them had been pretty convincing.  And ever since then, Natasha had been back and forth across the globe in order to find the rest of Bucky’s triggers.  

 

Speaking of Bucky, the second thing that Steve kind of hated about Darcy was the way she looked.

 

Bucky would have also loved her because she was basically his second youngest sister Lillian reincarnated.   Steve would know, because he’d been kind of sweet on Lillian from the age of eight until the age of 19, when Lillian had gotten married to a boy who she’d gotten into some trouble with, namely trouble being a small baby born nearly eight months after the wedding.  She had been sassy and bold, funny and kind, and pretty as a picture with her dark brunette curls, her naturally pink lips and by the time she hit fourteen, round and plentiful curves that had Steve going through a pencil a week back in the 30’s in an effort to commit the soft, rounded lines of Lillian’s shape.

 

It was a superficial reason, and Steve knew that Darcy couldn’t help the way she looked (even though every time she baked fresh bread in the kitchen and then ate a piece or three with whoever had been lured into the trap, she’d joke about never giving up bread to lose what she called her  _ extra pudge _ .  Steve had been so angry that she’d referred to those lovely soft parts of herself with such self recrimination and self-effacing humor that he’d actually stomped out of the room).  

 

The third thing, and probably most damning thing that Steve sort of hated about Darcy was that Darcy Lewis was a good person, deep down in her heart.  She was positive to the point that it made Steve itch on the inside.  She never faltered, not when dealing with a depressed Wanda, or a surly Sam, or bored and cranky children.  

 

Not even now, when Scott was silently stressing and distraught and Steve was standing in front of her, his arms crossed, face as grumpy as he could make it, resolutely telling her,

 

“No.”

 

“Captain Rogers,” Darcy sighed.

 

“I’m not a captain anymore,” Steve rolled his eyes.

 

Darcy wrinkled her nose and shrugged, “Mister Rogers.”

 

Clint and Sam both snorted.

 

“This is the only way that Scott is going to see his daughter,” Darcy said softly, trying to get Steve to see reason.

 

“Natasha says she’s deep undercover in Helsinki,” Steve shook his head.  “We can try to get the pickup delayed.”

 

“Yeah, that’s not gonna work so much,” Scott shook his head.

 

There was no way the baby mama was going to give on this.  It had taken a lot of wrangling on the legal end of things to get her to admit that Scott was technically no longer a fugitive.  They had Laura to thank for that, her law degree and a few outside contacts in New York City coming in handy.  The only way Cassie would be able to spend time with her dad though was at the secure facility.  But he wasn’t to come near the Cassie’s mother.  Cassie would have to be picked up by an intermediary along the border and transported to see her father.

 

And Darcy was pushing to be that intermediary.

 

“Sam could go with me,” Darcy pushed.

 

“Sam and Clint are at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list right now thanks to their last trip to the States,” Steve reminded her.  Apparently leaving to go and get heating units from a secret supplier had also turned into a rescue mission for a school bus that had been tipped over thanks to some idiot magicians battling it out on the streets.  

 

General Ross had not taken kindly to the men basically taunting him on the local news, giving the Accords the metaphorical middle finger.  And in Clint’s case, the  _ actual _ middle finger.

 

“I could do it myself, I’m really good at traveling,” Darcy promised.

 

“Thor told me that you weren’t to leave the facility without protection,” Steve reminded her.  “You’re not safe out there, Miss Lewis.”

 

“That can’t be true,” Darcy waved him off.

 

Both of them knew it was, in fact true.  Thor had warned Steve that his father was on Earth somewhere, disoriented and still powerful.  The Asgardian had thought Darcy was in grave danger, being so close to him and Jane.  Jane herself was safe with Sif on Vanaheim, and according to Darcy, happy as a clam to be exploring another realm. 

 

Thor had been serious when he had tasked Steve with providing protection for his lightning sister.  Steve would never even think about letting him down.  

 

“There is another alternative,” Laura said gently, looking at Steve with a very small smile.  “You do look very different, Steve.”

 

He did, in fact, look different.  His hair had been darkened and cut very short.  A beard had grown in and masked his face pretty well.  With bulky enough clothing on, he hardly resembled the man he had been six short months ago.   Wanda couldn’t go out on her own, Sam and Clint were out of the question.  That left Steve as being the most logical choice of chaperone.

 

For one brief moment, Darcy’s can do attitude and steamroller like positivity faltered.  She  _ frowned _ .  Steve marveled at it.  It was the first time such an expression had come on her face.  But then she looked at Scott, who looked so hopeful that it wasn’t really fair.  Her frown disappeared immediately, replaced by a smile that was fond and indulgent before turning into a grin that was much more normal to see on her pretty face.  It wasn’t one of the rare, truly happy, little tilts of her mouth that Steve had seen in glimpses, like when Cooper or Lila did or said something adorable, or when Steve would carry in the big boxes of rations that a friendly Captain Canada would have delivered once a week.  

 

Steve errantly wondered how he had learned to categorize her smiles.  He didn’t want to dwell on it, the fact that he could do so would only piss him off more.

 

“Okay Mister Rogers,” Darcy grinned at him.  Clint and Sam snorted again.  “Fair warning?  I’m the BEST car companion during long road trips.”

 

* * *

 

 

She was  _ not _ the best car companion during long road trips.  

 

Number four on the list of things he really didn’t like about Darcy Lewis: her perfectly slightly below average singing voice coupled with her incredibly above average enthusiasm for singing along to everything she knew the words to.  And everything she  _ didn _ ’t know the words for, she would just use gibberish or worse, so much worse, was when she adorably sang the instruments parts of the songs she would find on the radio.  

 

Her ipod had mysteriously disappeared after the first pitstop.  One listening of her singing all of the parts of  _ Wicked _ was enough, apparently.   But, much like everything that was thrown her way, Darcy just rolled with the punches.  She said she wasn’t so attached to the ipod anyway, Coulson had sent her a box of one hundred shortly after New Mexico to try to replace the old one that hadn’t been returned to her.  She’d gone through twenty-five of them so far.

 

Number five on the list of things he didn’t like about Darcy Lewis was the fact that she smelled so damned good.  He’d noticed the second day of her stay at the cluster of cabins that the rest of the team referred to as the  _ Secret Avengers Facility _ .  She’d been taking stock of what kind of rations they had in the communal kitchens and he’d tersely answered every single one of her questions about what kind of things everyone seemed to like.  She’d immediately tried to make some small talk, but thankfully, Scott had needed some muscle to lay a sewage pipe.  

 

On his way out to the very smelly and dirty work, Steve had gotten one whiff of sugared apricots and vanilla.  It wasn’t overly sweet or cloying, more like a wisp on the air to his enhanced senses, which meant it wasn’t even perfume.  It was probably her soap mixed with her natural scent mixed with the smell of the tea she drank every morning.  And it was  _ maddening _ in the small car that barely went over fifty-five miles an hour.

 

He sullenly wished that Natasha had left them their sole quinjet.  He also wished that they’d only had to drive an hour or two to pick up Cassie Lang.  And most importantly, he wished that Darcy Lewis wasn’t leaning towards the drivers side of the car, peering at the dashboard and letting that delicious scent of hers waft up to his nostrils.  

 

“Mile five hundred!” Darcy crowed.  She turned down the volume on the radio and sang out just slightly off key, “And I would drive five hundred miles and I would drive five hundred more just to bring back Cassie Lang to see her dad and maybe go to a stooooooooooore!”

 

Steve blew out one breath through his nose, trying to concentrate on the road.  

 

“Sorry, that might be a pop culture reference that is a little too obscure for you to have picked up on yet,” Darcy apologized genuinely.  “If you hadn’t of stolen my ipod and put it in your back pocket back at that gas station, then I could play you the original.”

 

Steve fully took his eyes off the road for the first time since he had started the engine in the old jeep.  He looked at her in guilty bewilderment and opened his mouth to dispute her accusation.  Instead she gave him a look, just an arch of her eyebrow and a knowing purse of her lips.  

 

“I really don’t enjoy  _ Wicked _ , it’s---it’s sad,” Steve admitted.

 

“How do you feel about a classic?” Darcy wondered.

 

“How classic is classic to you?” Steve came back immediately.

 

“Cole Porter was a big deal when you were kicking it back in the forties, right?” Darc shrugged.  “I have a two hour playlist of Ella Fitzgerald singing his song book.”

 

Steve took another deep breath and nodded, before leaning forward a bit and reaching into his back pocket for her ipod.  He handed it back to her and tried not to categorize the smirk on her face into his ever growing catalogue of Darcy Lewis facial expressions.  

 

He failed of course, and put his eyes back on the road resolutely as he tried to get the jeep up and over fifty-five miles an hour.  

 

He failed at that too.

 

* * *

 

  
  


Steve never wanted to test the limits of the serum more.  He wanted to see how long he could go.  How far.  How fast.  What he really wanted to do was go all night and not stop.  He definitely never wanted to stop.  

 

He wanted to drive until they got to where they needed to go and not stop anywhere.  That was the plan.  Get the whole ordeal over as soon as possible. 

 

Ten hours in, that plan was not going to hold up.  Maybe since he gave up the shield, his plan making skills had fallen by the wayside as well.

 

Darcy had tried to plan as well.  She'd packed a cooler full of appropriate road food, having been witness to the ravenous nature of Steve's appetite.  She had hoped it would be enough to last them the day.  She had not counted on Steve continually taking the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from her with a nod and a soft, thanks.  Steve's plan there had been to keep his mouth full to avoid conversation.

 

It hadn't bothered Darcy one bit, because she kept on talking, and talking and talking.  Steve now knew even more about her than he had ever known about any other woman on the face of the planet.  He knew that when she was five, she cut her own bangs all by herself in order to hide a bubble gum incident from her foster mother, and the hair had been maybe all of a half an inch long and stuck straight up on her forehead.  He knew that she couldn't take any kind of medication without passing out asleep, and even candy that looked like pills such as tic tacs or smarties might make her drowsy because her brain would trick her into thinking they were medicine and would promptly do its best to shut completely down.

 

He knew what she thought about all kinds of music.  He knew that that she preferred to save television shows for years and years in order to binge watch them all in a week's time if possible.  He knew that she wasn't scared of bugs that were alive, able to smack them away or shoo them or even kill them (although he suspected she used it as a last resort).  But she absolutely refused to deal with bugs that were already dead, because ' _ Mister Rogers, what if they came back to life?  Just think?  Zombie bugs!  No thanks, dude _ .'

 

He couldn't suppress a chuckle at that one. And she had beamed so big and bright at him in response that he had politely asked that she drop the Mister Rogers of it all and call him Steve instead.

 

"Steve," she said softly, the smile on her face such a delicate, beautiful thing that Steve felt something inside of him twinge so badly that he stiffened and panicked, remaining mute as she told an animated story about how she had mistakenly thought her college advisor's name was actually Professor Seymour Butts for the better part of her freshman and sophomore years.

  
  


Reason number six Steve hated Darcy, she wore her heart on her sleeve and her life story was always at the tip of her tongue.  You had to either be a special kind of stupid to share so much with someone she'd met so little time ago or, and Steve didn't and couldn't know why, she just trusted HIM that much.

 

But his strategy of stuffing his face had been a bad one, because they ran out of food that should have lasted at least a whole day in less than six hours, much to Darcy's dismay.  Apparently she was very worried about making sure he had enough to eat.  And two hours after he'd shoved the last peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his mouth, his stomach began gurgling with hunger.

 

But even though Steve had not wanted any pit stops, Darcy had planned it into their trip and pointed him towards an exit that promised to have a grocery store and a gas station in a small, old town that looked like it had seen better days.  Steve had dropped Darcy at the front door of the incredibly small grocery store before going to the sole gas pump across the street and filling it up quickly.  He lingered at the car even when he was done, not overly eager to go into the grocery store and hear more chatter and adorable stories about breakfast cereals and bubble gum.

 

He took his first few moments of silence he'd had in many hours and sighed.  They had thousands of miles to go yet.  And as much as he wanted to push the limits of the serum and drive through the night and day to get there faster, it would do him no good in ridding himself of Darcy any quicker.  They'd just have to wait for Cassie to be dropped off anyway.  

 

He was stuck with Darcy, whether he liked it or not.  

 

The town was so quiet it might as well have been uninhabited.  And that's probably why the sound of a rifle going off was as loud as any canon Steve had ever heard.  He pushed off of the car he had been leaning against forcefully, actually causing the Jeep to rock up onto the opposite wheels for a few moments as he ran for the grocery store, where the shot had emerged from.  

 

He found himself staring down the shaking, smoking barrel of an antique musket that probably hadn’t been fired since the 1800’s.  His eyes darted quickly from the gun, to the older man holding the gun, to the clearly annoyed and slightly frightened older woman at the checkout.  But no Darcy.  

 

"Ed, just calm down now, and go home and sleep it off!" the cashier advised him.  

 

"You're stepping out on me, Kathy, I know it!" Ed insisted.  

 

"Calm your damned old fool head down!" Kathy ordered him, reaching for the closest thing she could, a container full of mints.  She opened up the tin and began tossing them one by one at the man with the rifle.  

 

"She stepping out on me with you, boy?" Ed demanded of Steve.

 

"No," Steve scoffed.  He gave a respectful nod towards Kathy.  "Not that you aren't attractive ma'am, but I only stopped in town to fill up the tank and grab some---"

 

"Don't you dare finish that, boy!" Ed yelled.  "I heard what you American men will grab."

 

"That's not me, son," Steve assured him.  He took a look around the store, wondering where Darcy was.  Had she gotten hit by the first shot?  Was she on the ground, bleeding out, yet another innocent soul lost in the long line of souls that Steve's life had ruined?  Was she in pain?  Scared?  Steve was getting more and more panicked by the second, his breaths coming shorter with every pass, as if his asthma had kicked in.  

 

"Turn around and get out!" Ed ordered Steve, taking a half step forward with the rifle shaking even more.  "Stop staring at my girl like that!"

 

Steve grimaced, but turned, his mind going through his available options.  It was imperative not to cause any damage here.  The last thing he needed was to have a drunk, but relatively harmless senior citizen injured because of him.  It wouldn't exactly help his current attempts to fly under the radar.  He had just worked out the best way to get the rifle out of the man's arms and he was about to spin again when he heard a loud, feminine battle cry and then a loud clunking sound.

 

"Oh hell!" Kathy cried out.

 

Steve whirled around and watched as Ed swayed on his feet.  He quickly reached out and grabbed the rifle, efficiently pulling out the buck shot before looking back up and seeing a visibly panicked Darcy staring as Ed turned on shaky feet.  She was holding a big, dented ten pound can of baked beans in her trembling hands, having obviously just whacked Ed in the back of the head with it.

 

She hadn't hit him hard enough though as he staggered towards her.  Kathy took care of it though, grabbing something more substantial than mints, a medium sized pumpkin that had been on top of her register as decoration, and tossing it the back of Ed's head.  The pumpkin nearly shattered and Ed went down, right on top of Darcy, who shrieked as they both went down to the ground.  

 

"Miss Lewis!" Steve called out, putting the harmless rifle down and rushing to the spot on the floor where an unconscious Ed lay on top of Darcy.  He pushed the man off of the girl a little harsher than he needed to, but not really caring because Darcy was passed out cold on the floor, her mouth slack.  

 

"She whack her head?" Kathy asked worriedly.  "Darn it, Ed, you're gonna have to be driven to the jail again and sleep it off!"

 

"Miss Lewis?" Steve breathed, his hand gently going to her head, fingers going through her hair to the back of her head to look for blood.  He breathed in a sigh of relief when he found no abrasions, but it was short lived as he realized all sorts of other things could be rattled in her brain in order to cause unconsciousness.  His hands slowly moved to cup her face with more tenderness than he knew.  "Darcy?"

 

"She all right?" Kathy fretted.  

 

"Mmmm?" Darcy blinked her eyes open slowly, and her entire field of vision was full of Steve's worried face.  "You okay, Mister---Steve?"

 

"I'm fine, Darcy," Steve smiled, bigger than he meant to, realizing that she probably thought she was rescuing HIM from the rifle earlier.  She'd tried to rescue HIM.

 

It had been a long time since someone had been worried about him like that.  Even Bucky and the Howling Commandos, who had saved his hide plenty hadn’t done so because they thought he was helpless, Probably way back when Peggy had demanded the Vita-Ray machine be shut down in 1943.  Darcy had foolishly risked her life to save him from a few annoying pellets of buckshot from a lousy rifle.

 

Reason Seven that Steve kind of hated Darcy Lewis:  she was the kind of good hearted person who would attempt to save someone she barely knew, even at her own expense.  

 

"You gonna press charges?" Kathy wondered, trying to sound casual.  "Because you'll have to wait until the Sheriff stops by next week..."

 

"No, no charges," Darcy blinked, trying to sit up, her cheeks flushing when Steve helped her, and then brought her to her feet and held her close in an effort to keep her steady.  His right arm was around her shoulders and his left arm was wrapped around the front of her, and he had her body pulled flush against him.

 

He felt his own cheeks flush when she lay her head against his chest and let out a soft sigh as she went kind of boneless.  

 

"We still need those snacks," Darcy wagered.

 

"I'll throw a bunch of stuff in a bag and bring it on over to your car," Kathy promised, eager to not have the entire incident be blown up into bigger proportions, never knowing that both Darcy and Steve felt the same way.  

 

* * *

 

 

Steve was scared that the hit to Darcy's head had led to a concussion.  He'd tried to engage her in conversation to keep her awake as they sped away at fifty-five miles an hour from the little one gas pump town.  She was having none of that this time though, switching her ipod playlist to a bunch of soft, dreamy music that Steve saw was her 'sleepytimes' playlist.  

 

She kept nodding off, and Steve went through the first aid training Sam had enforced upon the Avengers once a month.  It was bad to let someone with a head injury sleep, he was sure of it, but if he could monitor her vitals, he might be able to allow her to doze a little.  

 

"Sweet sun, send me the moon," Darcy whisper sang along to the song playing and blinked stubbornly to banish sleep.  She yawned.  "Sorry, I was just...up late and up early and it's been a long day."

 

Steve knew that.  He knew she had been up late planning the logistics of the trip with Clint, Sam and Laura.  And then she'd been up well before dawn, packing the cooler that Steve had demolished and making one last breakfast for everyone before her week away from them.  Wanda had been staring at him early that morning after she had hugged Darcy goodbye, and had been watching him watch Darcy.  Then she had laughed for the first time in a long time before wishing him luck.  

 

"Just need a little nap," Darcy mumbled.  "Then I'll be good as new, promise."

 

"Darcy, if you have a concussion---"

 

"Don't have a concussion.  I had one of those before, and it made me puke and felt different.  I'm fine, I promise, just want a nap," Darcy assured him.  

  
  


Steve nodded before pulling up his right arm and reaching for her.  He pulled her across the bench seat and wrapped his arm around her, letting his hand conveniently lay against the pulse point in her neck.  

  
  


"What...huh?" Darcy blinked in confusion.

 

"Sleep, Darcy," Steve advised, swallowing as her pulse suddenly hammered against his fingertips.  "I just want to make sure you're okay while you do."

 

"Oh....thanks?" Darcy offered.  She was stiff for a moment and then her lovely plush body did that melting thing again and suddenly she was melded against every line of his body, one hand rucked up behind him on the small of his back, the other on his stomach.  A soft snore began immediately  and Steve swore he could feel a little spot of drool starting on his t-shirt where her face was lying.  

 

He tried to keep telling himself that he was doing this because he wanted to make sure her pulse wasn't erratic.  That if she had suffered a concussion, and closed her eyes and DIED, well, that would be bad.  Thor would kill him for sure.  He latched onto that thought and held tight.  He was watching out for her for Thor.  He was keeping her safe and concerned about her because of his promise to Thor.  

 

That was all.

 

* * *

 

Steve did not drive through the night.  He pulled off at the pre-planned and approved pit stop and drove the short distance down the darkening road to the motel they were going to stay at.  

 

Very carefully, he placed a still sleeping Darcy so that she lay against the seats instead of him, then went to check in.

 

"How long?" the clerk had asked him knowingly.  

 

"One night only," Steve nodded.

 

"Yes, but how many hours?" the clerk prodded.

 

"Uh---probably about fourteen or so?" Steve blinked at him in confusion.

 

The clerk blinked back at him, a little astonished.  

 

"Honeymoon suite then," the clerk shrugged.

 

"Actually, can we get a room with two beds?" Steve's face looked pinched as he asked it.

 

"Look bud, I don't know what kind of hotel you think this is, but they're all honeymoon suites, and they're all rented by the hour and they're all paid for in cash," the clerk smirked at him.

 

"Well, I have cash," Steve sighed, plunking down what was necessary and taking the key that had a fuzzy pink heart as the keychain dangling from it.  

 

Darcy was still asleep, but she seemed fine otherwise, so Steve simply picked her up and out of the car, carrying her bridal style into the motel room.  She snored against his shoulder some more.  

 

Definitely number eight on the things he hated about Darcy Lewis, she slept better than anyone else he'd ever met.  She slept so deeply, that he managed to accidentally let the bedroom door slam behind him after entering and she didn't even flinch in her sleep.  He lay her gently on the thankfully spotless bed and aside from her hands grasping at the fabric of his t-shirt, she didn't rouse from her heavy sleep at all.  Steve smoothed her hair out of her face and noticed that his hands were shaking a bit.  She snored again, louder this time and he couldn't help but let out a huff of laughter.

 

He went about getting dinner for them, knowing that she'd need something when she woke up.  There was a little diner stuffed into a simple, small storefront on the corner of the main street and he walked in and ordered five bags of takeout.  

 

When he came back to their room, Darcy was still sound asleep, and he actively began trying to wake her up, to no avail.  The door was slammed again as loudly as he pleased.  The key was noisily dropped on the glass top table.  He shucked off his shoes and let it hit the closet door and make a big banging sound.  He even coughed as loudly as he could.

 

Darcy snored in response.  

 

"Darcy," Steve said quietly.  "Darcy, wake up, I got food."

  
  


Nothing.  He sat on the bed and put a hand on her shoulder, giving her a gentle shake.

 

"Darcy," he said softly.

 

No response.  Well, maybe her nose wrinkled just a little in a completely infuriating and adorable way.  Steve sighed and sat on the bed in such a way that he was watching her.  His stomach growled and he knew the food was getting cold, but he honestly couldn't bring himself to move.  

 

When Steve woke up from the ice, he'd been told the war was over.  There was nothing left to fight for, which meant a big part of what had made him special no longer applied.  He'd fought for his country before.  And then when the Chitauri came, he fought for not only his country, but humanity.  

 

And Darcy was the living embodiment of everything good about modern humanity.  

 

She was irreverently funny, incredibly smart, and passionate about the things she cared about.  She was loyal and kind and brave.  

 

He hated that Darcy was everything he was fighting for and couldn't actually have for himself.

 

She twitched in her sleep and let out something like a swallowed cry.  Her entire body jerked again and this time it was a louder cry, not so muffled.  Steve felt himself panic as she was quickly enveloped in the throes of a nightmare, a fine sheen of sweat breaking out over her skin as she jerked in her sleep.

 

"No! Jane!" Darcy cried out.  "Help!"

 

"Darcy!" Steve said, louder than he had tried to wake her before.  He put his hands on her shoulders and almost shook her hard, but thought better of it when he realized she had already had one head injury that day.  Instead he reached for her, his arms going under her arms and pulling her like a stiff rag doll until she was in his arms.  He had them banded around her back, her legs falling to the side of his hips.  He rocked her slightly as he let her head fall against his shoulder.

 

She let out a gasp of air as she came into consciousness, her body tensing and poised for a fight as she didn't know where exactly she was.  He let one of his hands drift to her hair, stroking it up and down as he continued to rock her.

 

"You're okay, you're safe.  I'm here," Steve promised.

 

She took a few moments to get acclimated, taking some comfort from his touch before pulling away and looking up at him sheepishly.

 

"Sorry, I get, sometimes I get nightmares," Darcy mumbled.  

 

"Yeah, I noticed," Steve nodded.  He'd had his own nightmares after waking up from the ice.  It had taken a lot of therapy and a few years to get them to stop happening every night.  He'd get them every once in awhile still, but thankfully it wasn't something that happened a lot.  "You alright?"

 

"It's silly," Darcy waved him off, shimmying off of his lap and pushing herself off of the bed.  "You've seen worse than I have."

 

"Hey," Steve was off the bed in a heartbeat and gripped her hand in his.  He looked down at her with searching eyes and said, "Pain is not a competition.  It's just...pain."

 

"Yeah," Darcy nodded.  "I had a thing...in South America, after...uhm, after Hydra."

 

Steve was silent.  He'd not read a report about something happening to Jane and Darcy.  He'd read all the reports, too.  Not one said something about anything with Doctor Foster and Darcy in South America.

 

"They wanted to grab Jane," Darcy reached out her free hand and pulled some of the takeout from the plastic bags.  "About six guys, we were lucky that they were so disjointed from what you guys were doing in DC."

 

"What happened?" Steve asked softly.

 

"They were our security detail and when Hydra was exposed, they made the decision that they wanted Jane. And I stuffed her in a closet to hide and I got taken instead," Darcy shrugged.  "Roughed me up a little, is all."

 

"What?" Steve looked down at her, bewildered. He could tell she was downplaying the severity of what happened.   "There was no report---"

 

"Clint came for us, he was just twelve hours away," Darcy nodded.  "Nat got him a message before you guys brought Shield down. He was getting stragglers out there that had security details that might have been...Hydra."

 

"Darcy," Steve breathed. Twelve hours.  She’d been in enemy hands for twelve hours.  His mind was racing, he needed to know what had happened.  He blinked down at her as he remembered the prank war she’d started with Sam, and how Clint had pulled Sam aside before Sam had jumped out of a closet to scare her and gotten him to change his tactic.   "I'm sorry."

 

"Hey, no, it's not your fault a bunch of dudes in their thirties who were supposed to protect me secretly aligned themselves with a Nazi organization," Darcy waved him off.  

 

"How bad was it?" Steve wondered.

 

"Not so bad," Darcy pulled away from him and sat down at the little table and began opening more containers.

 

Reason number nine that Steve hated Darcy: she seemed to be physically incapable of lying.  And she was lying right there.

 

"This looks awesome, is it poutine?" Darcy grinned.  "Fair warning, Steve, but I've been tasked with a secret mission while I'm out in the wilderness with you.  I'm supposed to bring back whatever I need to make poutine.  Laura Barton has a weakness for it."

  
  
  


* * *

 

  
  


Steve didn't need a lot of sleep.  He'd never needed a lot of sleep, even prior to the serum.  Before it had been the very real fear that he would go to sleep and never open his eyes again.  There was too much living to be done, and sleep could happen later. 

 

After the serum, it was all too much.  The sights, the smells, the sounds.  His brain could suddenly playback exact moments from his life with all the clarity of a movie screen and he was having trouble turning it off every time.  He was overstimulated from the moment he stepped out of the Vita-Ray chamber, until the moment he put the plane down in the ice.   

 

When he woke up, it had been Clint and Natasha who had assisted him after the Chitauri Invasion.  Natasha had noticed that he seemed a little too sensitive to certain stimuli and the spies started to train him to shut certain things off and on.  But sleep still eluded him.  Normal was about three hours a night, and thanks to the serum, he was just fine on that.

 

After they were done eating, Darcy realized what kind of a hotel they were in for the lack of a television, alarm clock, radio, or anything really, aside from a bed, a small table and two chairs, and a mirror on the ceiling.

 

"Fucking Barton," she had huffed, before shrugged and saying, "With all the sleep that I just got, I won't be able to get my eyes to close without some source of entertainment."

 

Steve, who had quickly figured out what kind of hotel it was since checking in, arched an eyebrow despite his attempts not to.

 

"I mean---uhm, phone, television, shadow plays by the fire, traveling bard," Darcy stammered off quickly, her cheeks going a little pink.  

 

"I was never so great with recitations or plays as a kid," Steve admitted, a self-effacing smirk tilting his lips upwards.  "Bucky was great at them."

 

"I'll bet he was," Darcy nodded, cleaning up the last of their dinner and placing it in the trash can that had been far too close to the bedside. "I mean, I watched the movie.  You guys had a movie made about you.  Did you know that?"

 

"I might have heard some stuff," Steve chuckled.  It had been made fifteen years before he had re-emerged from the ice and had gotten a few awards.  He'd watched it too.  The actor playing him was a little too weepy, and Bucky was too short.  And of course they'd played the whole thing a little too gay.  It was a movie that had been about the secret illicit love affair after all.  "They got a couple things wrong."

 

"Let me guess, Bucky never nursed you through the Spanish Influenza in soft candle light with gentle touches?" Darcy blurted out, looking only a little chagrined at having left something so honest come out.  She sat down at the foot of the bed, bringing her bare feet up underneath her.  

 

"I can understand why people think it," Steve shrugged, sitting on the edge of the bed next to her, his posture stiffer than hers naturally, but looking less stiff than when he had gotten into the car with her that morning. "And I know that we were used as icons for an oppressed group of people in the world, so I don't make too much of a fuss.  But no, that never happened.  We're brothers."

  
  


"Tell me about him?" Darcy requested softly.  "Not just about before.  Like...tell me why Sam has a crudely drawn stick figure with a metal arm attached to the dartboard in the common room?"

 

"Sam says they're frenemies," Steve explained.

 

"Oh yes, and also, they're thirteen years old, so that makes sense," Darcy rolled her eyes.

 

Steve laughed, and then he talked.  And talked some more.  And talked for almost a whole two hours non-stop, with Darcy paying attention to every word, asking questions where she had to, laughing when she couldn't contain it, and even tearing up when Steve told her about watching Bucky re-freeze himself in order to protect people.

 

"He's a good man," she whispered.

 

"He is," Steve agreed.  "He was, and he is and he will be."

 

"Tash is on it," Darcy nodded.  "He'll be whole in no time. Hopefully we'll have enough time to make the new base big enough to contain any future bickering between Sam and Bucky."

 

"Remind me to talk to Clint about making the budget for extra first aid kits around the sparring arena," Steve laughed, then immediately yawned.  

 

"Steve, go to sleep," Darcy tried to advise, but her own yawn mangled her words.  

 

"Alright," Steve nodded, feeling more tired than he should, really.  He made a play to get up off of the bed and felt his pulse thudding when Darcy put a hand on his wrist to stop him.

 

"Where do you think you're going, Mister?" she demanded.

 

"I'll crash on the floor," Steve insisted.

 

"Don't---no," Darcy shook her head.  She shrugged and looked a little shy, "It's a big bed.  We can share."

 

Steve wanted to insist that he should sleep on the floor. He really did.  He wanted to say that he'd rather sleep on hot coals than have to share a bed with her.  He hated her.  He did.  

 

"Okay," he answered, going around to the other side of the bed and laying down on his back, stiff as a board as he stared up at the mirror on the ceiling.  He watched intently as Darcy put herself on the other side of the bed, pushing back the simple duvet that people so very rarely slept  _ under _ .  

 

She was less than a foot away from him on the queen sized bed, curled up into a little ball on her side.  Dark eyelashes hitting flushed cheeks clear in the near darkness of the room to his eyes.  The steady sound of her breathing was loud in his serum enhanced ears.  And the smell of her.  That sugary sweet vanilla and apricot scent was surrounding him like a cocoon.  

 

"This was a good day," Darcy mumbled sleepily.

 

"I was shot at and you smacked your head so hard you passed out," Steve reminded her, his voice a low rumble in the quiet room.

 

"Yeah," Darcy barely nodded. Her voice was a whisper, but still it filled Steve's senses. "Left my ipod in the car, we could have listened to that sleepytime playlist.  I have---have a nice couple of soft songs."

 

Steve nodded, his eyelids feelings suddenly heavy.  He didn't understand what was happening.  He never fell asleep this easily, and certainly not with someone who he found so...so...

 

"You could sing it again," Steve offered.

 

"Hmmmm," Darcy hummed noncommittally.  It was silent for a few minutes before her soft voice, just a little off pitch and warbly.  "Sweet sun, send me the moon, empty the skies out, bringing me one step closer to you."

 

Steve felt himself go boneless and weightless and floating, and rather than jerk away from that feeling before sleep, like he would normally do, he let out a silent breath, and rolled in the bed as he succumbed to blissful, deep slumber.

 

* * *

 

 

Steve woke up the next morning to sunlight, something that hadn't happened in a very long time.  He felt a wet spot on his t-shirt, sort of like how Darcy had drooled on him during her nap in the car the day prior.  But she wasn't lying against his chest.  He blinked his eyes open lazily and noticed she wasn't in the bed at all.  

 

There was a pounding on the front door.

 

"Your fourteen hours are almost up, you're gonna have to pay for more, marathon man!" 

 

Steve was up and out of the bed very quickly, taking a quick cursory lap around the little motel room to ascertain that Darcy wasn't in the bathroom.  No sign of her led him to the door, yanking it open and glaring at the young man who had checked him in the night before.

 

"Scary," the kid said with wide eyes.

 

"Where is she---did you see a short, brunette---" Steve hesitated to describe her.  Obnoxiously beautiful probably wasn't the best way to go.  "Curvy, pretty---"

 

"I just sell the rooms, man, I don't fill them for you," the kid shrugged.

 

"Fuck," Steve hissed putting a hand on the kid's shoulder in order to move him and rush out in search of her.

  
  


"Breakfast!" Darcy announced cheerily as she walked up to their door.  She grimaced at the sight of Steve about to manhandle the hotel clerk.  Holding up four bags of takeout and another two grocery bags she said, "Maybe pay the boy for another two hours before we're done?"

 

"Damn dude," the kid chuckled.  "She's like an energizer bunny."

 

"Watch your damned mouth," Steve grumbled, pushing the kid gently aside to allow Darcy into the room.  Steve went for his wallet and fished out the extra cash and thrust it at the kid.  

 

The kid took the money and shot Steve finger guns with a big grin as he walked quickly backwards, stumbling over air and recovering with no elegance at all.  "Enjoy!"

 

Steve’s body made a move forward to chase after the disrespectful kid, to smack him upside his head and to tell him that there was no way that he was doing what the kid had accused him of doing with Darcy.  She was a damned lady and if he would ever be so lucky to call her his, he’d take her someplace that didn’t charge by the hour and have mirrors on the ceiling.

 

He stopped in his tracks though when he felt a small hand rest gently against his forearm.  He froze, realizing what he had just dared to think.  If she was his girl...it was too ludicrous to consider.  

 

He  _ hated  _ Darcy Lewis.  The last thing he should be thinking about is making her his.

 

“Nobody wants cold eggs over easy, Steve,” Darcy said simply.  “Leave the kid go, no need to set the record straight about what we’re doing.  He won’t think any less of you for allegedly slumming it with the likes of me.”

 

“I---what?” Steve blinked.

 

Darcy shrugged and turned to the breakfast feast she had procured.  Steve saw that frown on her face for a second, the one he had seen when it had been first suggested that he be the one to take her to pick up little Cassie Lang.  Steve knew in that moment, seeing that small hint of sadness that Darcy  _ knew _ how much he disliked her.  

 

“Look, tiny bottles of maple syrup!” Darcy announced, her cheery attitude back in place as she held up miniscule little bottles of maple syrup.  “I know you had a vat of the stuff delivered last time, but the kids will really appreciate the tininess of these.”

 

Steve silently ate his breakfast, watching Darcy carefully as she quickly made work of her own, taking french toast and making a breakfast sandwich with a runny egg and a sausage patty.  She did it at a lot, now that Steve thought about it...made sandwiches at every meal.  Whatever she had served up back at the homebase, she always managed to create some kind of sandwich out of it for herself, and she’d done it so far on their road trip. 

 

It was just a small, little quirk.  But Steve was floored when he realized he didn’t add it to his mental list of things he hated about her.  Instead, it went on to the slowly growing list of things he found oddly fascinating.  Like how she ate with a paper napkin crumpled up in her left hand.  How she managed to take her long, curly brown hair and essentially tie it into a knot at the base of her neck.  How her lips always seemed pretty and pink even though she never applied any kind of lipstick in his presence.  How she managed to scrunch up her nose just so that her glasses would be pushed up her face without using her hands once.

 

As she assembled the road snacks and put them in the cooler, Steve finished off the many breakfast dishes she had brought back for him and he realized it was all of his favorite things, cooked in the way he preferred.  She’d even managed to find old fashioned oatmeal, along with a little bit of milk and brown sugar for him to add in.  

 

By the time he had packed up the car, and Darcy had returned from handing in their room key, Steve had come to the frightening conclusion that the list of little quirks he found amusing about her had started to get a little longer than the list of reasons he hated her.  

 

He didn’t quite know what to make of that.

 

* * *

 

 

Three days went by easily as they made their way south and east.  Their path was hardly a straight line, and Steve appreciated the thought put into their meandering path.  Tracking them would take a lot of work and manpower.  They hardly aroused suspicion, as it looked like they were simply a pair of young lovers on a wandering honeymoon.  

 

Clint was still a rat bastard, because every night, they had stopped at the pre-approved hotel that Clint had chosen, and it was always a pay by the hour, single bed room.  They’d spend the day on the road, steadily going through all of Darcy’s playlists.  The gas stops always lining up with a store somewhere that Darcy could pick up a few things to make life a little better back at the base, as well as more snacks to make it through.  

 

A great amount of dinner would be procured and brought back to the seedy hotel room, and they would wind up chatting and talking and listening to that infuriating sleepytimes playlist until falling asleep, side by side.  

 

Steve had never slept so well in his life, and on the second night, he realized why when the loud sound of the trash dumpster outside of their room getting slammed closed startled him out of a deep, comfortable sleep.  He felt a pleasant warmth against his chest and looked down to see that Darcy had rolled in her sleep and was currently cuddled and snoring against him, her head on his chest, drool from her lips accumulating on his t-shirt.  

 

He couldn’t move her.  He couldn’t even consider it an option.  Instead, he brought his arm up and around her, holding her tightly to him and feel back into a nearly euphoric, peaceful sleep.  When he woke again with the sunlight, she was gone, and brought breakfast back with her.  He knew it happened every night too, because he always woke up feeling incredibly well rested and had the drool spot on his shirt.  

 

The last night, she had had another nightmare.  One flinch from her had woken Steve up out of a deep sleep and the whimper she made in her sleep had his heart twisting uncomfortably.  She was stiff as a board in his arms and Steve wished that Clint had told him what the young woman had been through in her twelve hours as Hydra’s prisoner.

 

From how she was reacting in her sleep to the demons she dreamed about, Steve knew it had to have been bad.  He felt his shirt getting wet and knew this time it was tears.

 

“Sshhh, Darcy,” Steve soothed her in a whisper that seemed too loud and harsh to him.  He wrapped both arms around her and let his thumb rub up and down her back.  “You’re alright, I’m right here.  Nothing bad is going to happen to you, I promise.”

 

He continued to do his best to soothe her, and it seemed to be working.  He knew the moment she woke up with a startled little gasp, but he didn’t stop his ministrations.

 

“Darcy, I will never let anything bad happen to you again, I promise,” Steve whispered.  

 

She made a move to get away from his hold, but he held her there firmly

 

“Sorry,” she whispered.

 

“No, don’t be, it’s okay,” Steve promised.  “Just, just stay here, please?”

 

She nodded, unable to speak as he continued to stroke her back and hold her close.  Eventually, her breathing evened out once more, and Steve knew she was sleeping again.  He didn’t stop though, trying to give her some kind of comfort as she slept again.

 

“I’ll never let anything bad happen to you, Darcy,” Steve promised again, swallowing hard.  “I promise”

 

* * *

 

 

They made it to Niagara Falls on the fourth day, one day before they would have to pick up Cassie Lang from the intermediary on the other side.  Steve was surprised that instead of another seedy motel, they were standing in the lobby of a really upscale, lovely hotel and loud and bright casino.  

 

“We’re totally getting food that is not in a styrofoam container,” Darcy whispered to him as she slid a card over to the desk clerk who gave them a card key to their room.  

 

“Sure, where do you want to go, it looks like they have every kind of food you could think of,” Steve smiled as they walked back through the lobby.  He gestured to one of the fancier, upscale restaurants and said, “I think they might even have cloth napkins.”

 

“Oh, I was just thinking room service,” Darcy admitted as they ignored the allure of bright, loud and cartoonish slot machines to get to the elevator bank to their room.

 

“Sure, if that’s what you want,” Steve nodded.  He took a little breath and tried not to let his mouth turn into a grim frown.  He hated to think that he had actually been really excited about taking Darcy out for a fancy dinner...a  _ date _ .  A place with candlelight and glasses of wine and where they shared quiet conversation while they stared at each other across the cozy table.  Somewhere where he would have to pull out her chair, and they’d order one of each dessert and share them all.  

 

Maybe, just maybe, a place that had a little dance floor, and he’d apologize for stepping on her toes as he held her and swayed to the music.

 

“Steve,” Darcy waved her hand in front of his face.  They were now in front of the hotel room, and Steve had no earthly idea how they had gotten there.   “The key card?”

 

“Oh, right,” Steve fumbled in his pocket and let them into the room, where Clint had not disappointed.  One queen sized bed, a lot nicer than the ones they had been sleeping on, but still.  Just the one.

 

“So, how do you feel about blackjack?” Darcy wondered.

 

“I prefer gin rummy,” Steve shrugged.

 

“Okay, how do you feel about being a big shiny distraction to the dealer while I count cards during blackjack?” Darcy asked with an impish little half smile.  When Steve gave her a single arched eyebrow she laughed and shrugged, “Totally worth a shot.”

 

Steve found that her laughter made him smile, and he realized the tenth thing that he loved most about her was her continued, seemingly life long search for some kind of vaguely innocent mischief.  

 

_ Oh Christ. _

 

He stood stock still, staring at the mirror atop the dresser (and thankfully not on the ceiling), repeating what his mind had just spat out at him.

 

He didn’t hate Darcy.  

 

He  _ didn’t _ .

 

For the last few months, since Thor had dropped her off into his life, he hadn’t been hating her at all.  Not even a little bit.  Why had he even thought it was hatred for her?  He’d made a list of things that were amazing about her and somehow had tricked himself into thinking it was why he had hated her.

 

“Steve?  I’m going to go downstairs to that gift shop, I saw magnets, and Cooper and Scott are kind of obsessed with tourism magnets,” Darcy announced.

 

“Yeah, okay, yeah,” Steve nodded, still standing and staring at the mirror in a daze.

 

He didn’t hate her.  He’d been falling for her for months.  Suddenly Clint’s choice of hotels made sense.  Laura’s gentle suggestion that Steve accompany Darcy had a hidden meaning.  Sam’s peculiar coaching about the right way to use a bathroom in a hotel and not have a smelly disaster happen could be viewed in a different light.  Lila Barton glaring at him before they left and holding her thumb up to her throat in a cutting motion  _ certainly _ had a context now.  And Wanda and Cooper sitting him down a week and a half ago and making him watch a bunch of strange family friendly movies about teenagers in love also made a little bit more sense.  

 

He was falling in love with her the whole time, and everyone else knew but him.

 

Bucky was in a fancy Wakandan freezer, and  **_he_ ** probably knew before Steve.

 

He could deal with that, Steve was slow on the uptake when it came to his own emotions that didn’t directly involve strategic thinking.  But what he couldn’t deal with was the memory of Darcy frowning when she realized he would be accompanying her on this mission.  Everyone else may have figured out how he felt before he did, but he had the sneaking suspicion that Darcy did not.  She didn’t know how he felt, and probably did think that he hated her.  

 

He needed to tell her that it wasn’t true.  That it was actually the opposite of true.

 

He was going to make a run for it, to track her down when the phone in the room rang.  

 

“Yes?” he picked up the phone.

  
“Steve.  Lobby.   _ Now _ .”  Natasha was terse and harsh and Steve knew better than to ask questions.  He slammed the phone down and made a run for it, bypassing the elevator bank and instead jumping down entire flights of stairs until he’d gone from the ninth floor to the first in record time, yanking the door open to see chaos.

 

The sound of gunfire was clear, even amongst the screaming crowd that was scattering and running.  Two shooters, max, not automatic, probably just hand guns.  Steve ran in the opposite direction of everyone else, towards the gift shop that Darcy had said she was going to visit, and sure enough, that was where the shooters were, but thankfully, Steve supposed, they were hardly professional thugs.  

 

They were just trying to rob the casino.

 

Steve tackled one of the gunmen to the floor, effectively knocking all of the air and consciousness out of him.  Steve sprung up immediately and the second gunman got a forearm to the jugular, knocking him down as well, and there was Darcy on the other side of him, ready and waiting to hit the man with a large glass sculpture of Niagara Falls.  She jumped when the man hit the ground at her feet and dropped the statue before taking a deep, gasping breath of air.

 

“You’re okay,” Steve said immediately.   “Darcy, sweetheart, you’re okay.”

 

Darcy nodded, pushed her glasses up just by wrinkling her nose and began backing away from the men who had brought violence back to the forefront for the both of them.  Steve stepped around the inept robbers and put his hands on her shoulders, staring down at her as she fought against tears with a ridiculous amount of bravado.  

 

“I’ll never let anything happen to you,” Steve promised her.  

 

Darcy’s bottom lip trembled and she shrugged away from his touch before side stepping him and making a run for it, heading straight out of the front door of the hotel.  Steve turned and wanted to run as well, but by then the police had arrived and were obviously keen to question him.  He took a deep breath of relief when a familiar red head stood in front of him and smirked up at him.

 

“I have your statement right here, sir, you’re free to go,” Natasha nodded.

 

Steve knew better than to ask how she had known the hotel was about to get robbed.  He also knew better than to ask how she ended her other mission three days early to be at the pickup point for Cassie, even though she had told him she wouldn’t be able to.  

 

“Grab a chocolate bar for her,” Natasha said under her breath, gesturing with her head to the display.  “I’ll have them charge it to your room.”

 

* * *

 

 

Steve found Darcy close to the falls, where tourists gather to wait for their ferry to take them around the Falls.  She was sitting on a bench, bent in half, her head in her hands.  He sat down next to her, and grimaced when he realized he’d given her no personal space as his thigh was rubbing against her thigh on the bench.  

 

“You don’t have to do this,” Darcy said softly.

 

“Do what?”

 

“Pretend you care,” Darcy said simply, not sounding angry, or sad, or anything.  It was the most neutral he had ever heard her voice, truth be told.  “I know you’re not my biggest fan, Captain Rogers.  I know that I annoy you.  I have that effect on a lot of people, I can read the signs.”

 

“That’s not true,” Steve sounded a little angry.  

 

He thought it had been true.  He almost thought it might be easier on both of them if it was dislike he was feeling for her.

 

“It’s true,” Darcy disputed calmly.  She sat up straight and put her shaking hands just above her knees, palm down.  Her voice began to wobble just a bit as she continued, “It’s always true.”

 

“Darcy, I like you,” Steve insisted with conviction, his hand reaching out and laying on top of hers.  “More than I ought to for your own safety.”

 

“My own safety,” Darcy repeated miserably.  She laughed and the sound was false and hollow in Steve’s ears.  That wasn’t the laugh he’d heard so much in the last few months.  It was darker and full of a sort of pain, and Steve had to admit that as much as he liked the laughs and giggles that had been full of mirth, he liked this sad laughter too.  Darcy felt  _ everything _ so completely, and Steve knew that to do something like that took bravery and strength and he loved that.  He loved that she felt everything so much.

 

Darcy sighed and shrugged, “Everyone is so worried about my safety.  Thor and Jane and Maria Hill and Natasha...they’re all worried about my safety, and you know what they have in common, Captain Rogers?”

 

Steve nodded and said softly, “They leave you behind.”

 

“They leave me behind,” Darcy’s voice was strangled and cloaked with tears as she stared off into the distance at a ferry that was deboarding.  “They want me safe, but they never actually want me there.  They never want me to follow them, like I’m just too much of a bother to have around.  Like I can’t protect myself, and you know what, Steve, that’s  _ bullshit _ , because I helped save the damned world a bunch of times!  And I dealt with what those Hydra assholes did to me and it doesn’t matter because the just leave me.  And  I know that this last week has been a nightmare, and I’m sorry---”

 

“ _ No _ ,” Steve said resolutely and she began to cry in earnest.  For the first time in his life, he felt like he knew what to do with a pretty girl and he turned his body and slid off the bench, kneeling in front of her and looking up at her with an earnest shake of his head.  Steve reached up and wrapped his arms around her, feeling a calm go through him when she returned the embrace, crying on his shoulder.

 

“Sorry,” Darcy sniffed.  

 

“Don’t be,” Steve insisted.  “I like a lot of things about you Darcy.  I really do.  I like how thoughtful you are about other people, I like that you get along so well with everyone you meet.  I like---no, no, I love the way you care so much.  I love the way your hair stands up when you wake up.  I love how you drool in your sleep and---I just…I want to find out everything about you.  And no, I don’t want you to follow me.”

 

Darcy hadn’t taken a breath while Steve was talking.  She pulled away from his embrace and looked down at him curiously, taking in a deep, wavering breath.  Steve’s hand ran from her shoulders, down the length of her arms to hold her hands in his.  He smiled at her and shrugged,

 

“I want to follow you.”

 

Darcy sniffed and he saw that small tilt of her lips, the one she used when she was genuinely happy and pleased.  She leaned forward and placed a small, too brief kiss on his lips before pulling away and looking playfully wary.

 

“You said you were bad at talking to girls.  You told that story where Bucky tried to get you through a date in 1939 with your own made up sign language,” Darcy accused.

 

“Apparently I can manage it when it really matters,” Steve shrugged.  “Can I take you to dinner tonight, Darcy?”

 

“No styrofoam containers?” Darcy asked skeptically.

 

“Not unless you have leftovers,” Steve gave a little smirk.

 

“Okay, one thing first?” Darcy had a look of a woman who was about to ask for something she knew would probably not be the most welcome of suggestions.  

 

“Sure,” Steve said indulgently.  

 

“How do you feel about getting that shirt all wet?” Darcy nodded her head slightly towards the empty ferry.  “It’s kind of on my bucket list, and you know, nothing makes a bad mood go away than looking at waterfalls and rainbows.”

 

“You are going to be so much trouble for me.  I can tell.  C’mon, let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

 

Natasha flew Cassie Lang back to the Secret Avengers base on the quinjet.  She’d given Steve a wink, a fresh batch of untraceable cash, and told him to meander back with Darcy in tow at their leisure.  So they did.  And when they made it back to the base ten days later, hand in hand, no one seemed all that surprised.

 

Steve discovered a lot of things to add to his list of things that he didn’t actually hate, but instead loved about Darcy.  He could have filled a book after just a few more months.  

 

It took all of his patience to wait nearly a year, until Natasha had brought Bucky back from Wakanda, as healed and whole as he was ever going to be.  Just as Steve thought, Bucky was completely enamored with Darcy, and had actually tried to convince her multiple times to leave his boring best friend for the exciting duo of ex-Russian assassins.  Steve was mollified that Darcy never took him seriously.

 

Steve’s marriage proposal may have been a little over the top, but it had Natasha’s seal of approval, so he didn’t hesitate to bring her back to Niagara Falls, take her out on the ferry ride, and go through his whole long list of things he loved about her.  And at the end, he got down on one knee and held up the antique silver ring with a diamond chip set amongst even smaller rubies and held his breath until she said yes at the top of her lungs.

 

Darcy always got a little loud when she was especially happy.  It was just another thing on the list of things that Steve really loved about Darcy.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The song that Darcy sings at two points in the chapter is Sara Bareilles, "Send Me the moon", which is really a very good sleepy time playlist.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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